Sheriff Poole & the Mech Gang

  Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang

  Sheriff Poole

  Midpoint

  Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang

  A short story by

  Charles de Lint

  Copyright 2013 by Charles de Lint

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  for John Joseph Adams

  who got me to write this story

  I know what Tommy Mansfield’s looking at the moment I usher him into the barn. It’s the first thing everybody sees: that old poster from the Showdown Ranch with a painting of the whole Mech Gang facing down a lone lawman on a dusty street. You can see variations on that theme in any of the western art galleries in town, except the bad guys wouldn’t be clunky robot outlaws that look like they should be on the cover of some old sci-fi pulp magazine. But back in the day robots and animatronics were the whole theme of the Showdown Ranch.

  “I remember that place,” Tommy says moving closer to the image. “My uncle took me and my brother one weekend—God, years ago. That poster’s still in nice shape.”

  Everybody in town knows about the folly of Showdown Ranch, but only the old folks remember that it was my dad’s folly. It’s mine, too, even though we lost the land, lost all the workshops, lost everything except for what I’ve managed to salvage and stash away here in the barn. I’ve got the complete set of the Mech Gang now—all five of them—though they’re missing a bits and pieces. I’ve got Sheriff Poole, too. The only thing wrong with him is some scorching on the left side of his face, which makes him look more like one of the villains instead of the hero.

  Nights I can’t sleep I leave the farm and walk to the next canyon over, the dog at my side. He sits and sifts through the night air for smells he likes while I sift through the ruins of Showdown Ranch. Developers were going to do something with the land but then the bottom fell out of the real estate market, and Linden is just far enough into the foothills of the Hierro Maderas to make the commute to Santo del Vado Viejo less attractive than those developers might have hoped. They’ve got the whole canyon boxed in with chain link fencing, but that’s not going to stop anybody. It sure doesn’t stop me.

  One day I’ll buy the place back. Moon dreams, Mason tells me, trying to hide the worried look in her eyes, but I just smile. I know it’s not going to be tomorrow. Probably not for a whole mess of tomorrows. But I’m a patient man. And until then I’ll keep going through the rubble from the explosion and salvage what I can.

  Tommy looks away from the poster. His gaze travels around the barn, but there’s not much to see. I’ve got the Mech Gang stashed under tarps in the old horse stalls. My workbench takes up the opposite length of the wall. The sheriff is lying there, except there’s a tarp over him as well, so unless you knew, you’d have no idea what I’m working on.

  “So what did you want to show me?” Tommy asks, finally pulling his gaze away from the poster.

  Tommy’s a picker, one of those guys who travels the countryside looking for deals on antiques and junk that they can buy cheap and sell for a profit. I met him at Sam’s Garage in town. I was getting gas for the truck; he was asking Sam’s widow if she’d mind him poking around the field of junked cars behind the garage. When I realized what he did for a living—when he told me his personal obsession was old carnie rides—I knew I had to invite him back here.

  “Well,” I tell him, “it’s not a vintage Ferris Wheel or a Tilt-a-Whirl, but it’s something special all the same.”

  I lead him to the stall that holds the leader of the gang and hit the light switch before I pull off the tarp.

  “Tommy,” I say. “Meet Johnny Scales, the leader of the Mech Gang.”

  I’ve seen him a thousand times and I still find it impressive whenever I take off the canvas covering. Scales stands six-foot-four with a barrel chest, arms and legs like enormous metal tentacles, and a head like a bucket with what appear to be two lights for eyes and a grill where his mouth would be if he were a man. He’s wearing oversize jeans and a cowboy hat, and has a six-gun strapped on. He’s not wearing a shirt. His curved chest door is open, showing an intricate tangle of clockwork parts.

  I turn to Tommy and his reaction is everything I hoped it would be: shock and awe.

  “My God,” he says. “It’s a freaking work of art.”

  It takes him a long moment before he can tear his gaze away to look at me.

  “Does it still work?”

  “He,” I correct him, “and yes he does—after a fashion. Would you like to see?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  I grin and walk over to Scales. Reaching into his chest, I flick a lever, then close the door. There’s a whirring sound inside his chest and after a long moment his eyes slowly begin to glow.

  “Don’t much care for your tone, stranger.”

  The voice is a recording and comes out of the mouth grill sounding like a radio just off the station.

  Tommy takes a couple of steps back—I don’t think he’s even aware he’s doing it. I hold my hand over a holstered six-gun that I’m not carrying.

  “Are you going to draw or suck eggs?” I say.

  The right arm moves, the hand draws his gun and he’s firing before I can even clear my imaginary holster. If the gun had bullets in it, I’d be dead. As it is, all we hear is the click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber. Scales blows on the end of his gun and smoothly returns it to its holster. Then he’s still once more, his glowing eyes the only sign of “life.”

  “Holy crap!”

  Tommy’s staring wide-eyed with a huge grin on his face.

  “I didn’t think it was a real machine,” he says. “I mean, I’ve seen it live when I was a kid, and I’ve looked at the YouTube videos, but I always thought there was a guy inside.”

  “Everybody does.”

  He takes a tentative step forward. “Who built it—I mean, him?”

  “My dad. Back in the day they were all in perfect working order. I’ve got the whole outlaw gang, but they’ve all got problems. Scales is in the best shape. The only issue with him is that I still can’t get his legs to move.”

  “He’s just amazing,” Tommy says.

  I nod in agreement but the truth is, none of the Mech Gang can hold a candle to Sheriff Poole. Beside him they look exactly like what they are: clunky clockwork robots. But they were the best Dad could do. What I don’t tell Tommy—what I’ve never told anybody—is that they’re just poor echoes of the sheriff. Everybody thinks they’re the way they are to make them look like villains. But it’s more that Dad just didn’t have the skills or parts to make them any better.

  He had the sheriff for a blueprint, but it wasn’t like he could take him apart to see what made him tick. I mean, he could have, but there was no guarantee he’d be able to put him back together again. It’s the same reason I haven’t dismantled the sheriff. I suppose I could bring him in to some high tech research company, but they’d be faced with the same challenge, and these days, what does anybody know about clockwork mechanics? Everything runs on microchips now.

  But Dad figured a lot of it out—more than I have so far, that’s for sure. Still, he was never able to make the parts as small as they are inside the sheriff and still have them work for more than a couple of days. The sheriff’s cogs and wheels look like regular st
eel alloys, but whatever the metal actually is, it’s stronger than anything Dad could get his hands on. His parts had to be larger, and without that particular metal to sustain their weight, they’d just break.

  Bottom line, Sheriff Poole is something special. Dad told me he dates back to the 1800s, that his own great-grandfather either found him or made him. The sheriff is supposed to be the reason the ranch survived Indian raids, rustlers and whatever else was thrown at us. But he wasn’t able to stop what happened the night the Showdown Ranch was shut down for good.

  “I know a guy,” Tommy says. “He used to work on animatronics in places like Disneyland, but he was always doing his own research on how to make his pieces better. He’s an old guy now—retired years ago. But he might have some ideas.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Tommy gets it right away. I thought he might, which is why I showed him the Mech Gang in the first place.

  “It’s cool,” he says. “We don’t need to let anybody else know. You say the word and I didn’t see anything myself. But I’ve got to tell you—this is something I’m never going to forget.”

  “Trust me,” I tell him. “I know. But there just comes a time when you have to show it to someone who’s going to appreciate it.”

  “No one else knows?”

  “Just my wife Mason.”

  He smiles. “And I’m guessing she’s as enthusiastic about them as my Ellen is about the carnie rides I bring home. She almost left me when I came into the yard towing the Ferris Wheel behind my truck.”

  “I’d like to see those rides of yours.”

  “Any time.”

  We talk for so long that before I know it, it’s time for dinner. Mason’d have my hide if I let Tommy go off without at least an invitation.

  We’re sitting on the porch after dinner when the talk turns to the Showdown Ranch and what happened the night of the explosion. Tommy made a good impression on Mason—especially after offering to help with the clean up. We got the kitchen fixed up in good time, coffees made, the desert night cooling down the day’s heat when we stepped outside. Buddy’s asleep at my feet, Mason’s dozing against my shoulder, but she straightens up when Tommy asks the question.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I say.

  “Try impossible,” Mason says from beside me. She smiles before adding, “But that won’t stop him from trying.”

  “It looked like the workshop just blew up,” I say. “Like Dad wasn’t storing his oils and gasoline properly and something set it off. But if you study the wreckage with a suspicious eye like I have, you’ll see that it didn’t blow up from inside—or at least not at first. Once whatever it was hit the workshop—of course all that crap was going to blow. But someone fired something into it first.”

  Tommy has his feet up on the rail, looking out at the desert night. He drops them to the wood plank flooring and turns to look at me.

  “You’re saying somebody attacked the ranch?” he asks. “With what? A rocket launcher?”

  “I couldn’t say what they used.”

  That’s a lie. But while I like Tommy, I don’t know him well enough to trust him with something this big.

  “But I found a piece of the sheet metal roofing with a hole in it,” I go on. “Perfectly round. Like a laser had gone through it. But this was back in the sixties. Were they even using lasers back then?”

  “I don’t know.” He waits a beat before he asks, “Your father…was he inside when it happened?”

  “No, he was outside—where he got cut in two. The coroner said it was from a flying piece of sheet metal.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  I shake my head. I almost add, “Not with what I know,” but we’ve gone as far as I want to go with a stranger.

  “So those carnie rides of yours,” I say. “You have them all set up and working?”

  For a moment I think he’s going to say something more, but then he takes the hint.

  “A couple,” he says. “I’m working on the Ferris Wheel right now, but there’s a lot of weak metal, especially in the baskets. I’m in a bind because they’ll never be safe to use as they are, but I hate the idea of replacing all that vintage metalwork.”

  We talk a while longer. Mason goes to bed first and we follow soon after. I show Tommy to the guest room, then take a stroll around the ranch buildings with Buddy. I study the sky above the old Showdown Ranch canyon but it’s clear, so I turn in.

  It’s long past midnight when Mason nudges me, but I’m already awake. Outside I hear Buddy whining. I look to the skies above the canyon. Cursing, I get dressed. Before I leave the room I grab my six-gun and its holster from where they hang in the closet.

  “Dan,” Mason says.

  She’s sitting up, bedclothes pulled up to her chin.

  “I’ll be careful,” I tell her as I leave our bedroom.

  I know she’ll be out to help like she always does. She’s a good woman. Wish I didn’t have to keep putting her through this.

  I draw the six-gun from its holster and cock the hammer as I walk down the hall. Tommy sits up when I kick in the door and point the pistol at him. He’s obviously disoriented, but I’m too pissed off for it to register much.

  “Goddamn!” I yell at him. “We fed you. We put you up. And this is what we get in return?”

  Tommy holds up his hands.

  “Easy there, cowboy,” he says. “I don’t know what’s got you all worked up, but if I did something to offend you, I swear it’s nothing I ever intended.”

  I point to the window with the hand that’s not holding the pistol. That remains steady, aimed at his head.

  “We’ve had three months of peace,” I tell him. “That’s the longest we’ve ever had. Then you show up and they’re back. You’re telling me there’s no connection?”

  “They…?”

  He’s torn between wanting to look out the window and keeping his gaze on the six-gun pointed at his head, hammer cocked. In the end curiosity wins out over fear and he glances out the window.

  “What the fuck?” he says when he sees the light show above the canyon.

  That’s when I know for sure and lower the pistol. The fact that he woke up completely disoriented finally registers.

  “They’re back,” I say.

  “Who’s back?”

  “The things that killed my dad.”

  He turns away from the light show. It looks like helicopters training spotlights on the ground, except they’re not helicopters. And the creatures in those flying aircraft aren’t human.

  “But your dad’s dead,” Tommy says. “Why would they come back?”

  “I figure they’re looking for the sheriff.”

  “But—”

  “If we make it through the night, I’ll tell you what I know. Right now we need to get ready because they’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

  I leave the room without waiting for an answer. Buddy and I are halfway to the barn when Tommy catches up to us, breathing heavily.

  “What…the hell’s…going on?” he manages.

  I’m at the barn’s side door and I fling it open, hitting the lights as I head for my workbench.

  “Can’t talk,” I tell him. “You can help or stay out of my way.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  I grab a box of shells off the workbench and toss it to him.

  “Go into the stalls and load up the Mech Gang’s guns,” I tell him.

  “But—”

  “Either do it, or go back to the house and stay out of my way.”

  I know he’s got a thousand questions, but I guess he sees something in my face that tells him how serious this is.

  “Load their guns,” he says. “Right.”

  “They’re under the tarps. I’ll help as soon as I get the sheriff ready.”

  “The sheriff…”

  He’s headed toward the stalls, but stops dead in his tracks as I pull back the tarp covering Poole where he’s lying on the workben
ch.

  “Oh man,” he says. “You have the freaking sheriff!”

  “Move!” I tell him.

  His gaze is locked on the sheriff for one long moment, then he nods and hurries over to the old horse stalls. I turn back to the sheriff.

  “Sorry,” I say to him as I reach into his chest and turn him on.

  Unlike Johnny Scales, the sheriff immediately sits up, the movement smooth as my own. Smoother. He closes his own chest door, his gaze ranging throughout the barn until they finally settle on me.

  “They’re back?” he asks.

  His voice has a slight mechanical tone, but otherwise it’s indistinguishable from a human’s.

  I nod in response to his question.

  “How many?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. But there are a lot of lights. Three? Maybe four?”

  He nods. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  “How’s it going with the Mech Gang?” I call out to Tommy.

  I turn when there’s no response to see him standing by the open door of the first stall, slack-jawed, his eyes big.

  “Get the boys ready,” the sheriff says. “I’ll go stand guard.”

  I walk over to Tommy and pluck the box of shells from his hand while he stands there dumbfounded watching the sheriff walk outside.

  I’ve got the tarps off the gang and I’m loading guns when Tommy finally gets himself together enough to help me. I’ve finished with Johnny Scales and the Linden Kid and I’ve moved on to the Myers Brothers, Chris and Pike. Chris is missing his legs, Pike one of his arms. But not his shooting arm.

  I grab a handful of shells and hand the box to Tommy.

  “Get their guns loaded,” I tell him.

  He nods and gets to work without any more questions, though I can see them written all over his face. I cross the stall to the last of the gang, Paco Mendez. All that’s left of him is a torso jammed into a small wagon and held in place with ropes. I load up his guns then pull the wagon out into the main part of the barn, heading for the door. By the time I get back to the stalls, Tommy’s finished loading the Myers Brothers’s guns.